Was Charlie Parker the Culprit Behind the Chord-Scales?

[Tal_175]

So to summarize, you are making the distinction between a key centered approach, like I'm playing in Bb over these chords and a chord centric approach.

So for instance if someone was thinking G harmonic minor to play over |Am7 D7| Gm7 ... That would not be thinking in a chord-scale way.

Yes, I contrasted it with the key centered approach as one of the other approaches. I'm not making the claim obviously that these are the only approaches out there.

So it seems that if someone is conscious of the chord tones of the moment then they would be playing chord-scalar by your definition.

One can be conscious of chord tones while playing in a key centered organization but in that case they would probably not talk about making melodies with the extensions of chords when using none chord tones. If they do, then they are bringing in the chord scale view into the picture. Either that or there is no such thing as chord scales as described in various education and reference sources.

Where I get hung up on this concept is the following. I might think of some of the chord tones like just the 3rd and the 7th and give myself freedom with the other notes based on considerations like melody and overall key and the wider context like in the G minor example above.

Anyways, like I said before there really isn't a right or wrong answer and obviously the chord changes have impact on what one plays. It's really a matter of degree for me.

Sure, but just so be clear this is not "chord scales are good" or "chord scales are bad" thread. There are many threads about the cons and pros of chord scales. The way I personally view things mostly correspond to chord scales but the thesis of this thread is not chord scales are superior to other approaches.

[Christian Miller]

Post Berklee Chord Scale cats play different.

The ordering of the notes tends to be freer with the chord scale concept, but on the flip side things tend to be more within the scale and less chromatic by and large. Bop guys tend to stack things in thirds and use diatonic and chromatic scale tones to connect between them. It’s an extended chord tones concept not so much a free use pitch set concept if that makes sense. (Barry didn’t conceptualise things this way but his playbook leads to the same results.)

Again most modern guys do a bit of both, but older players tend to do just the one thing.

Transcribe a mix of older and more contemporary players and I think that comes out clearly.

I think a lot of birds lines on things like rhythm changes A section - fast moving changes within a clear tonal framework of a single key - make sense when understood from a key centre perspective. (I don’t know that he looked at it that way.) Actually that’s true of a lot of jazz players


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[Christian Miller]

For example, a bop player might sub an + or maj7+5 chord on the b7 of a dominant. So C+ or Cmaj7+5 on D7 say - and use that structure (see Dewey Square for example). That’s a specific device that sounds very bop.

A CST person would see those extensions and think ‘Lydian dominant’ and then play within those notes, including diatonic triads and chords, intervals, whatever. Much freer.


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[pamosmusic]

Post Berklee Chord Scale cats play different.

The ordering of the notes tends to be freer with the chord scale concept, but on the flip side things tend to be more within the scale and less chromatic by and large. Bop guys tend to stack things in thirds and use diatonic and chromatic scale tones to connect between them. It’s an extended chord tones concept not so much a free use pitch set concept if that makes sense.
….

I think a lot of birds lines on things like rhythm changes A section - fast moving changes within a clear tonal framework of a single key - make sense when understood from a key centre perspective. (I don’t know that he looked at it that way.) Actually that’s true of a lot of jazz players


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Yeah and I don’t see why referring to higher extensions in describing one’s improvisational concept would rule out thinking this way.

[Tal_175]

For example, a bop player might sub an + or maj7+5 chord on the b7 of a dominant. So C+ or Cmaj7+5 on D7 say - and use that structure (see Dewey Square for example). That’s a specific device that sounds very bop.

A CST person would see those extensions and think ‘Lydian dominant’ and then play within those notes, including diatonic triads and chords, intervals, whatever. Much freer.

Totally agree.

OK, so suppose we are looking at the lines played over D7 by two players. One from the bebop era, one from the more modern era. Suppose we find arpeggios diatonic to the Lydian dominant scale in both lines (not excluding potentially also some linear ideas from the scale).

What we can say with high probability is that both players were making lines based on the chord in the moment (D7). They are also getting that #4 interval against the chord in their lines (also 9 and 13). I mean the line played can be even identical.

For the modern player we can also be fairly confident that they are using a chord scale based approach. The Lydian dominant scale in particular.

The definition we use is:
“Chord-Scale Theory is an approach to improvising that relates chords to scales. The name “Chord-Scale Theory” comes from the idea that the notes of a thirteenth chord can be rearranged as a seven-note scale.”

We don't consider the bop player's approach chord scale (even if the line bop player played contains chords diatonic to Lydian dominant and perhaps all an only the notes of the scale) because:

- Well historically Lydian dominant didn't exist back then:
True but historically scales were conceived by looking at the works of composers. For example the use of the leading note in minor is conceptualized as melodic minor or harmonic minor later on. It is possible that the Lydian dominant scale became a thing because at some point players found it to be a useful to organization of the lines they learned from their heros.

- What the bop player played cannot be considered a scale because he is probably thinking stack of chords, substitutions, extensions:
If the scale fits these note choices then it is a valid observation. The "rearrangement" of the extended chord as a scale in the definition is not meant to be a prescription of how to play it.

I realize that these are very fine distinctions. The core insight of the quote is the chord in the moment approach with the use of the implied thirteenth chord as a melodic source which I think is the more important part of the definition as well.

[pamosmusic]

I realize that these are very fine distinctions. The core insight of the quote is the chord in the moment approach with the use of the implied thirteenth chord as a melodic source which I think is the more important part of the definition as well.

A couple issues with this.

1. The quote makes no mention of particular extensions, of the thirteenth chord, or of organizing those notes into a scale (note your definition says the notes of a thirteenth chord can be organized as a scale, not that they must be).

2. The thirteenth chord as an uninterrupted stack of thirds is a theoretical construct on its own, and isn’t terribly common in music generally. Think of how that voicing is realized on a piano or in a big band in practice. So I don’t think its dense to be suspicious of the idea that Bird referring to higher intervals of a chord necessarily means he’s thinking of anything we would recognize as a chord scale.

Beyond the assumption of the attribution, it just seems like there are so many stretches here I can’t really find the insight anymore.

[Tal_175]

A couple issues with this.

1. The quote makes no mention of particular extensions, of the thirteenth chord, or of organizing those notes into a scale (note your definition says the notes of a thirteenth chord can be organized as a scale, not that they must be).

2. The thirteenth chord as an uninterrupted stack of thirds is a theoretical construct on its own, and isn’t terribly common in music generally. Think of how that voicing is realized on a piano or in a big band in practice. So I don’t think its dense to be suspicious of the idea that Bird referring to higher intervals of a chord necessarily means he’s thinking of anything we would recognize as a chord scale.

Beyond the assumption of the attribution, it just seems like there are so many stretches here I can’t really find the insight anymore.

The answer to both of these can be found in the Cmaj+5 that's played over the D7 chord in Christian's example.

[Christian Miller]

You know or use it to sound in Ethan’s fantastically snarky terms, a European Jazz Promoter’s version of Bill Evans

Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, and One Night in New York City | The New Yorker

Tbh Chord Scale Theory been around longer than the entire history of jazz before Chord Scale Theory. I’m always puzzled when people make out it’s modern or progressive. It would be like saying improvising on AABA song forms was really progressive in 1970. Says more about the glacial rate of progress in jazz these days. And the basic CST sound is really very humdrum now.

In the article Ethan talks about a homogeneity in jazz due to CST and so on, and with respect I sort of know what he means. Listening to older music often, ironically, gives more of a shock of the new than yet another young guitar player who plays virtuoso chord scale stuff with a lot of the ambience on the amp. Not always, but quite often.

Otoh an obvious issue with CST in the educational sphere us that while it’s fun to doof around with it is on its own far too general and loose to teach the specifics of music. And the older I get, the more I realise it is mostly about the specifics. (And not front loading too much info on the poor kids. Something CST tends to encourage sadly.)

Obviously if you want to play bop you have to engage with the material directly. But tbf no one teaches that stuff with harmony really - it’s always taught as vocabulary, as idiom. The problem is I don’t think those outside the world of high quality jazz education realise that.

(And of course the great post modal players have their idioms just as much as boppers.)

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[pamosmusic]

The answer to both of these can be found in the Cmaj+5 that's played over the D7 chord in Christian's example.

Can they?

Christian seemed to be using that as an example of how these things aren’t always best described as chord scales.

[pamosmusic]

Nah, because chord scale theory allows for you to play over more than one chord using just one scale (key center approach) rather than changing the scale for every chord; IF that's what the player wishes. So that option is still there with chord scale theory, it didn't go away. Whether you use it or not that is totally up to each individual player.

Chord scale theory does not limit you in any way, in fact it frees you. All it does is tell you ALL the possible scales that can be played over a chord and a function, that's knowledge, and in my book knowledge is power, baby. Get it while it's hot and use it to create aural wonders.

Yeah this would be in line with what Christian was saying about chord scale having little to say about how to use itself.

I think I’m pretty chord scaley but also sound pretty bop-adjacent because I might use the theory to decide that it might be fun to mess with Ebmaj7 over a Dm chord rather than Fmaj7, but then I put a bunch of enclosures and shit around and it doesn’t sound much like scales, even though that’s where I found the sound.

[Christian Miller]

Totally agree.

OK, so suppose we are looking at the lines played over D7 by two players. One from the bebop era, one from the more modern era. Suppose we find arpeggios diatonic to the Lydian dominant scale in both lines (not excluding potentially also some linear ideas from the scale).

What we can say with high probability is that both players were making lines based on the chord in the moment (D7). They are also getting that #4 interval against the chord in their lines (also 9 and 13). I mean the line played can be even identical.

For the modern player we can also be fairly confident that they are using a chord scale based approach. The Lydian dominant scale in particular.

The definition we use is:
“Chord-Scale Theory is an approach to improvising that relates chords to scales. The name “Chord-Scale Theory” comes from the idea that the notes of a thirteenth chord can be rearranged as a seven-note scale.”

We don't consider the bop player's approach chord scale (even if the line bop player played contains chords diatonic to Lydian dominant and perhaps all an only the notes of the scale) because:

- Well historically Lydian dominant didn't exist back then:
True but historically scales were conceived by looking at the works of composers. For example the use of the leading note in minor is conceptualized as melodic minor or harmonic minor later on. It is possible that the Lydian dominant scale became a thing because at some point players found it to be a useful to organization of the lines they learned from their heros.

- What the bop player played cannot be considered a scale because he is probably thinking stack of chords, substitutions, extensions:
If the scale fits these note choices then it is a valid observation. The "rearrangement" of the extended chord as a scale in the definition is not meant to be a prescription of how to play it.

I realize that these are very fine distinctions. The core insight of the quote is the chord in the moment approach with the use of the implied thirteenth chord as a melodic source which I think is the more important part of the definition as well.

Well logically 'chord scales ' and 'upper extension tertian structures' obviously aren't the same thing, one belongs to the other.

Bebop guitarists are jazz guitarists, but not all jazz guitarists are bebop guitarists.

It's a nested relationship. If we go down from the general seven note pitch set of the Lydian Dominant, we come to a specific case that is used by Bird. Bird's augmented lick on Dewey Square fits into the set of 'all things that are F Lydian Dominant' but not all combinations F Lydian Dominant notes will sound like idiomatic bop licks - or the smaller subset of things that Bird actually played. Which might not be what you are after. But we are talking about Bird.

That Dewey Square augmented lick fits into other sets too, such as 'things that are C Melodic Minor', 'things that are C Harmonic Minor', 'things that are F whole tone', 'things that are arpeggios', 'tertial upper structures', 'chord substitutions for F7', 'things that one could crib from Duke Ellington records featuring Billy Strayhorn compositions' and so on and so forth.

If we take a look at a lot of things that Bird plays using this type of harmony on dominant chords, one could start to build up a working model of where he might be coming from. We can start to form an educated interpretation of what he might be doing, how he might have been thinking. we can't know for sure of course, but it's an educated guess.

I think the last category is kind of important - oral history, quotation. Possibly most important?

(BTW I suspect he conceptualised it as a chord sub that gave him the upper extensions or 'higher intervals' on the dom7, btw. I don't know that, but that would be totally consistent with the wording of the 'quote')

In fact I don't think knowing that piece of melodic material belongs to X or Y scale is really not that much use unless the melodic idea is literally that scale (which comes up in modern players). The main thing is that you understand the 'blocked' harmonic context and can apply it, and know how it sounds and connects to other ideas. I know some great bop players who never think about the stuff and work with vocab only. It's just not that relevant.

(Actually trying to understand why something sounds good is terrible waste of energy and effort if your goal is to get playing. And modern jazz education is front loaded with this kind of stuff - "this line works because the notes are from the Lydian Dominant scale", or whatever. It's a problem because most jazz students tend to intelligent, curious people, and naturally want to know why stuff works haha.)

In terms of how the history went down, we started with the specific cases and later theorists generalised the framework progressively to the point where they eventually talk about seven note chord scales.

This is also how it worked for classical music. V-I did not exist as a theoretical concept in the baroque era. The theorists generalised it from properties of cadences in pre existing music. As a result, while all baroque perfect cadences can be defined as V-I, not all V-I cadences are idiomatic baroque perfect cadences

It that makes sense.

Barry Harris taught specifics, for instance. The counterpoint masters of Old Europe taught specifics. To learn this stuff requires years of dedicated work. We know this as jazz players, right?

Modern harmony classes deal more in generalities, because they might only have a few hundred hours of teaching time over a degree course (30 hours a year in class + assignments maybe, for four years?), so they teach CST, functions etc because it's straightforward and there's a limited amount of info to learn. But that's just top level stuff that might get you the vague outline, but not the specifics of this or that idiom if that's what interests you.

The real learning gets done by examining the music itself in detail.

It relates to what Bill Evans said about people tending to approximate things than get to the real core of it, which is ironic given the tenor of Ethan's piece lol.

[pamosmusic]

Along these lines, I really think Miles would be a super interesting bebop case. I was working with some students just the other week on blocking ii-Vs and they were a little skeptical that you can just skate the changes. So I played them a couple Miles licks from his solos on Half Nelson and Ornithology. They sound super beboppy and the students were like … okay … and then I showed them the notation and they make no effort at all to actually hit the changes. They sound perfect and land perfectly, but are basically just key center generalizing.

So I think he’d be really interesting in this context. Maybe more-so than Bird.

[Tal_175]

Well logically 'chord scales ' and 'upper extension tertian structures' obviously aren't the same thing, one belongs to the other.

Bebop guitarists are jazz guitarists, but not all jazz guitarists are bebop guitarists.

We aren't equating upper structures with chord scales, we are equating upper structures + primary chord tones with chord scales.
So in your example bob guitarists + remaining jazz guitarist. That comes back to the post #110 that was about the making a distinction between chord extensions and chord scale theory being contrived.

I don't really have anything new to add to it unless you have response to the specific points made in that post.

Well logically 'chord scales ' and 'upper extension tertian structures' obviously aren't the same thing, one belongs to the other.
It's a nested relationship. If we go down from the general seven note pitch set of the Lydian Dominant, we come to a specific case that is used by Bird. Bird's augmented lick on Dewey Square fits into the set of 'all things that are F Lydian Dominant' but not all combinations F Lydian Dominant notes will sound like idiomatic bop licks - or the smaller subset of things that Bird actually played. Which might not be what you are after. But we are talking about Bird.

That Dewey Square augmented lick fits into other sets too, such as 'things that are C Melodic Minor', 'things that are C Harmonic Minor', 'things that are F whole tone', 'things that are arpeggios', 'tertial upper structures', 'chord substitutions for F7', 'things that one could crib from Duke Ellington records featuring Billy Strayhorn compositions' and so on and so forth.

If we take a look at a lot of things that Bird plays using this type of harmony on dominant chords, one could start to build up a working model of where he might be coming from. We can start to form an educated interpretation of what he might be doing, how he might have been thinking. we can't know for sure of course, but it's an educated guess.

I think the last category is kind of important - oral history, quotation. Possibly most important?

(BTW I suspect he conceptualised it as a chord sub that gave him the upper extensions or 'higher intervals' on the dom7, btw. I don't know that, but that would be totally consistent with the wording of the 'quote')

In fact I don't think knowing that piece of melodic material belongs to X or Y scale is really not that much use unless the melodic idea is literally that scale (which comes up in modern players). The main thing is that you understand the 'blocked' harmonic context and can apply it, and know how it sounds and connects to other ideas. I know some great bop players who never think about the stuff and work with vocab only. It's just not that relevant.

(Actually trying to understand why something sounds good is terrible waste of energy and effort if your goal is to get playing. And modern jazz education is front loaded with this kind of stuff - "this line works because the notes are from the Lydian Dominant scale", or whatever. It's a problem because most jazz students tend to intelligent, curious people, and naturally want to know why stuff works haha.)

In terms of how the history went down, we started with the specific cases and later theorists generalised the framework progressively to the point where they eventually talk about seven note chord scales.

This is also how it worked for classical music. V-I did not exist as a theoretical concept in the baroque era. The theorists generalised it from properties of cadences in pre existing music. As a result, while all baroque perfect cadences can be defined as V-I, not all V-I cadences are idiomatic baroque perfect cadences

It that makes sense.

Barry Harris taught specifics, for instance. The counterpoint masters of Old Europe taught specifics. To learn this stuff requires years of dedicated work. We know this as jazz players, right?

Modern harmony classes deal more in generalities, because they might only have a few hundred hours of teaching time over a degree course (30 hours a year in class + assignments maybe, for four years?), so they teach CST, functions etc because it's straightforward and there's a limited amount of info to learn. But that's just top level stuff that might get you the vague outline, but not the specifics of this or that idiom if that's what interests you.

The real learning gets done by examining the music itself in detail.

It relates to what Bill Evans said about people tending to approximate things

These are good pedagogical points. The chord scale notion is more general than the language of any particular player. I don't think your points here negate my post #134. Sorry I don't want to repost these. Maybe you weren't responding to my post, that's fine. I think all off these are a bit orthogonal to the specific points I made earlier.
I do agree with the following though, and taking the liberty to assume that it represents a fundamental agreement with some of what I said earlier.

Tbh Chord Scale Theory been around longer than the entire history of jazz before Chord Scale Theory. I’m always puzzled when people make out it’s modern or progressive. It would be like saying improvising on AABA song forms was really progressive in 1970. Says more about the glacial rate of progress in jazz these days. And the basic CST sound is really very humdrum now.

In the article Ethan talks about a homogeneity in jazz due to CST and so on, and with respect I sort of know what he means. Listening to older music often, ironically, gives more of a shock of the new than yet another young guitar player who plays virtuoso chord scale stuff with a lot of the ambience on the amp. Not always, but quite often.

Not that there has to be agreement. This topic has always been a bit controversial in the jazz world.

[pamosmusic]

We aren't equating upper structures with chord scales, we are equating upper structures + primary chord tones with chord scales.
So in your example bob guitarists + remaining jazz guitarist. That comes back to the post #110 that was about the making a distinction between chord extensions and chord scale theory being contrived.

I don't really have anything new to add to it unless you have response to the specific points made in that post.

They are responding to the specific points in your post, namely that this is a question of process. Christian has described at length how the literature really strongly suggests that this isn’t really how musicians of the time learned or thought. And your response is just that they used them even if they didn’t think they were using them.

But your conclusion doesn’t really follow from any of the premises you’ve posted here so far, including the quote itself (assuming Parker even said it).

If I might posit an example … the E7 in All of Me often receives the natural 9, and the b9. Sometimes both in the same chord change. Sonny Stitt does this in the first chorus of his solo. Is he playing two modes of the dominant, or are those just really common dominant devices that have more to do with line shape and direction. Or maybe he’s chosen to use them together, extensions be damned. Does that mean he was thinking about extensions, or does it mean he wasn’t? On the A7 in bars 19-20 he plays the Bb and the B … maybe one is a passing note? Over the Dm7 he plays C# and Bb almost every time … is this a harmonic minor? Why on the m7 chord? Is the C# and approach note, or the natural 7?

The better question would be … is this even a productive mode of an analysis? Is it bringing clarity to what’s going on or making it more complex?

I think it obviously obscures what’s going on because it’s an anachronistic mode of analysis. Maybe you can learn something but I think you’ll miss more than you learn.

EDIT: here’s the solo …

[Cunamara]

Man, that’s a lot of discussion generated from a slightly ambiguous quote attributed to Charlie Parker. Interesting stuff.


I think what it points out is that all jazz pedagogy is a post-hoc attempt to explain what happened, which gets misconstrued by students into a prescriptive way of how to approach playing this music. You can experiment with it in the practice room to see if it produces sounds that you like, but if you’re thinking about this stuff in the middle of a solo on a gig, it’s already too late.

Music is the auditory expression of emotion, after all. There is no pedagogical method that can teach that.

[Tal_175]

They are responding to the specific points in your post, namely that this is a question of process. Christian has described at length how the literature really strongly suggests that this isn’t really how musicians of the time learned or thought. And your response is just that they used them even if they didn’t think they were using them.

I agree the chord scale approach wasn't how the bop generation learned jazz. In fact, if the quote is correct, Charlie Parker didn't view things that way until much later. Like I said earlier I feel like I would be repeating my earlier posts (#110 and #134) at this point. I liked that Christian gave a concrete example to base the discussion on so I responded with specificity in my response (134). I feel like things are getting a bit vague again. It's hard sort these things out if we don't build on specific points. Especially after I put in the effort to make my points as itemized and concrete as I could in my posts.

[pamosmusic]

I agree the chord scale approach wasn't how the bop generation learned jazz. In fact, if the quote is correct, Charlie Parker didn't view things that way until much later. Like I said earlier I feel like I would be repeating my earlier posts (#110 and #134) at this point. I liked that Christian gave a concrete example to base the discussion on so I responded with specificity in my response (134). I feel like things are getting a bit vague again. It's hard sort these things out if we don't build on specific points. Especially after I put in the effort to make my points as itemized and concrete as I could in my posts.

I mean ………. you did cut out the specific example I posted in the rest of the post you’re quoting.

[Tal_175]

I mean ………. you did cut out the specific example I posted in the rest of the post you’re quoting.

What was wrong with my specific posts? (110, 134). I don't have anything to add to them. If you have disagreements with any point I made in those posts, please be specific. Otherwise I feel like we are just talking over each other.

[pamosmusic]

Post 110 .... I already replied to 134 but you didn't find my reply terribly interesting. Alas.

Yes, my statement is making a distinction between chord extensions and chord scale theory is contrived.

No more so than insisting they're the same thing. They're both theoretical constructs and are both contrived.

But I don't think it is a seperate point. If one makes no distinction between the minor7b9b13 (ie Phrygian) scale and playing over that minor chord by melodically using the extensions b9 11 b13, then what is described in the Charlie Parker quote are chord scales.

Once again I think Christian and I both have been trying to make distinctions between these things. I transcribed a lot of Grant Green this past spring and he's all over this scale basically any time there's a minor ii-V and the extensions are there, but they serve purposes. Patterns come back in the way that the notes not included in the chord resolve and behave. This is classic bebop vocabulary present in plenty of other bebop music––Bird's included––and doesn't seem particularly interested in extensions as such, but rather in the non-chord tone's role in the shape of the line.

Take the melody for Segment, as maybe another good example. Very triadic, the sixth and natural seventh (relative to the home key) are used but in very specific ways. The flat six and flat two are also present but behaving in very particular ways. It's hard to make much chord scale sense out of a melody like that, but when you're looking at the melodic devices and their placement inside the form it makes more sense.

I really don't see how that Bird quote necessarily describes chord-scales, but even if it did ... I don't see that reflected in the actual music. Which of course would be the interesting part of the analysis. Maybe you can show us where you find that perspective useful in a tune. I'm not really sure I see it.

My point is the chord-scale view amounts to the chord-centric view (or intervallic view from the chord root) of the parent scale when the chord is diatonic to the scale. This is consistent with chord scales as they are defined in Mark Levine's book and the definition you gave. It's not a trivial shift from the key centered approach. It represents a mental attitude to playing the changes. It is seeing each chord and it's extensions as a distinct melodic unit organized from the root.

Yes, but is that attitude unique to Charlie Parker? Was he early to it? Would it represent something particularly fresh in his music? Would it illuminate something in his music? I mentioned earlier that I don't really think playing the changes or using upper extensions over those changes was really all that foreign to the pre-bop dudes Bird was listening to.

The distinction you are making with the historical and ahistorical perspective is about how these extensions were used but chord scales are agnostic to how they are used. Yes, the formal definition of chord scales puts the extensions within an octave. But that's done to present the concept in a consistent manner with other similar musical notions as opposed to suggesting a particular musical use. Charlie Parker probably didn't think "chord scales" as we conceptualize them now but that's because theoretical organization always comes after their use by the masters.

Surely you're right on this point. But since all this stuff is post hoc, I have to reiterate my earlier question ... is this a useful way to approach the music that he played and that others in his model played?

I've given a half dozen examples now of why I think it's not. I have to say I'm still curious why (or more interestingly where) you think it is.

[Christian Miller]

To be fair, i don’t think it’s necessary to emulate the musician’s mental process to learn their idiom. (Obviously in the case of bird it’s hard to know for certain if we are on the right track anyway.)

Plenty of musicians have used a CST framework when learning bop - the David Baker books being a good example. But Baker’s book focus a lot on the specifics of how to construct bebop lines, similar to Barry Harris.

In this case the theory sort of hangs around in the background while the student studies how to use bebop scales and other stylistic specifics to make stuff that sounds convincingly like bop.

The background theory doesn’t appear to be necessary however. Bebop players are usually very much into the granular stuff and a lot them don’t really like or use CST. (But not all.)

The argument that Bird was unconsciously using chord scale theory takes a philosophical position on the whole thing. It’s the same as saying Bach was using harmonic functions without realising it, as if music theory is like the theory of gravity or something. Music theorists (like George Russell or JP Rameau) often speak in these terms. I think it puts the cart before the horse.

(It’s also quite funny when the musician in question was actively dismissive of the theory they were meant to be using.)

I don’t buy it. It doesn’t feel like that when getting into the details of a musical style either.


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[Christian Miller]

TL;DR whether or not you understand the tritone sub as coming from the altered or diminished scale or just as a simple rule of thumb, you still have to work on the tritone sub specifically to play bebop.

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[Christian Miller]

Post 110 .... I already replied to 134 but you didn't find my reply terribly interesting. Alas.



No more so than insisting they're the same thing. They're both theoretical constructs and are both contrived.



Once again I think Christian and I both have been trying to make distinctions between these things. I transcribed a lot of Grant Green this past spring and he's all over this scale basically any time there's a minor ii-V and the extensions are there, but they serve purposes. Patterns come back in the way that the notes not included in the chord resolve and behave. This is classic bebop vocabulary present in plenty of other bebop music––Bird's included––and doesn't seem particularly interested in extensions as such, but rather in the non-chord tone's role in the shape of the line.

I mean... just putting this here.... I presume we don't think Bach used CST? (Maybe some do haha)

[Tal_175]

I mean... just putting this here.... I presume we don't think Bach used CST? (Maybe some do haha)

My first response to this was, well that would be ridiculous since Bach didn't say he became alive when he realized that playing upper extensions over chords was what he was hearing all along which is the point of the thread.

But then I remembered that you did say CST existed long before jazz. So maybe you're one of those people who believe Bach used CST after all, lol.

Tbh Chord Scale Theory been around longer than the entire history of jazz before Chord Scale Theory. I’m always puzzled when people make out it’s modern or progressive. It would be like saying improvising on AABA song forms was really progressive in 1970. Says more about the glacial rate of progress in jazz these days. And the basic CST sound is really very humdrum now.

What is your evidence for CST existing long before jazz?

[pamosmusic]

My first response to this was, well that would be ridiculous since Bach didn't say he became alive when he realized that playing upper extensions over chords was what he was hearing all along which is the point of the thread.

But if this thread tells us anything, I could just decide that he did say that and we could have a 150 post argument based on that assumption.

[pamosmusic]

What is your evidence?

Lol.